After the scourge of a brutal winter comes the gamblers scourge of unpredictable pitches. It looked like the usual rant of a madman when Sir Alex Ferguson suggested that the turgid pitch had “killed Wayne Rooney”, but he may have a point. The problems with the Wembley pitch are well documented, but elsewhere in England – as the permafrost threatened to lift across the country – an unprecedented number of managers claimed the pitch as a factor in iffy results. There were grumblings at Peterborough in The Championship as the poor surface did nothing to help a home side that prefers to play it on the deck, but the worst pitching – inevitably – further down the leagues.
It’s been a while since my last missive, but I have an excuse: I was busy getting married! While I was otherwise engaged (geddit!) the football season has slowly sputtered to life after many weeks of snowbound frustration. Chelsea have wrestled some kind of lead at the top of the Premier League, while (as I predicted) both Newcastle and Leeds have managed to let slip seemingly unassailable leads at the top of the Championship and League One.
